Michael David Lukas. (2018). The Last Watchman of Old Cairo: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.

Michael David Lukas. 2018. The Last Watchman of Old Cairo: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.

Michael David Lukas, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group, 2018.

Michael David Lukas. The Last Watchman of Old Cairo: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group, 2018.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/618/43A/59/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/618/43A/59/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780399181177
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 553675
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B073YT3HS5
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 553675
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780399181177
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 553675
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Michael David Lukas

title

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

dateAdded

2018-02-23T18:04:00-05:00

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=3510284
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Last Watchman of Old Cairo A Novel

crossRefId

3510284

subtitle

A Novel

id

61843a59-60f5-45e5-9a4f-0c203c8b870f

starRating

3.8

OverDrive MetaData

interestLevel

UG

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: TheLastWatchmanofOld_9780399181177_3510284
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 2677072
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780399181177
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 553675
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 3/13/2018
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=61843a59-60f5-45e5-9a4f-0c203c8b870f&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: TheLastWatchmanofOld_3510284
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 553675
     2. • type: ASIN
        • value: B073YT3HS5
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 3/13/2018
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=61843a59-60f5-45e5-9a4f-0c203c8b870f&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: TheLastWatchmanofOld_9780399181177_3510284
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 2227081
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780399181177
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 553675
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 3/13/2018
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=61843a59-60f5-45e5-9a4f-0c203c8b870f&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: secrets
2. • value: family
3. • value: Cairo
4. • value: literary fiction
5. • value: Historical
6. • value: Mysticism
7. • value: family life
8. • value: Middle East
9. • value: California
10. • value: Egypt
11. • value: love
12. • value: Coming of age
13. • value: Religion
14. • value: family secrets
15. • value: Historical adventure
16. • value: Moses
17. • value: Historical Fiction
18. • value: Drama
19. • value: fathers and sons
20. • value: Adventure
21. • value: magical realism
22. • value: sacred texts
23. • value: Contemporary
24. • value: Berkeley
25. • value: Magic
26. • value: Nile
27. • value: legends
28. • value: Cambridge
29. • value: International
30. • value: muslim
31. • value: Literary
32. • value: scrolls
33. • value: historical literary fiction
34. • value: contemporary literary fiction
35. • value: historical fiction novels
36. • value: historical fiction books
37. • value: magical realism novels
38. • value: magical realism books

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Lukas, Michael David
   • bioText: Michael David Lukas is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, which was a finalist for the California Book Award, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize and has been published in fifteen languages. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a student at the American University of Cairo, and a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv. A graduate of Brown University, he has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He teaches at San Francisco State University and lives in Oakland, California.
   • name: Michael David Lukas

imprint

Random House

publishDate

2018-03-13T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

fullDescription

In this “wonderfully rich” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the author of the internationally bestselling The Oracle of Stamboul, a young man journeys from California to Cairo to unravel centuries-old family secrets.
 
“This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman
WINNER OF: THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD • THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • THE SAMI ROHR PRIZE FOR JEWISH LITERATURE • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC • Longlisted for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize • A Penguin Random House International One World, One Book Selection • Honorable Mention for the Middle East Book Award
 
Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the centuries-old history that binds the two sides of his family. 
 
From the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, where generations of his family served as watchmen, to the lives of British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 leave Cambridge on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue, this tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces that attempt to bridge that divide. 
 
Moving and richly textured, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a poignant portrait of the intricate relationship between fathers and sons, and an unforgettable testament to the stories we inherit and the places we are from.
Praise for The Last Watchman of Old Cairo
“A beautiful, richly textured novel, ambitious and delicately crafted, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is both a coming-of-age story and a family history, a wide-ranging book about fathers and sons, religion, magic, love, and the essence of storytelling. This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman
“Lyrical, compassionate and illuminating.”—BBC
“Michael David Lukas has given us an elegiac novel of Cairo—Old Cairo and modern Cairo. Lukas’s greatest flair is in capturing the essence of that beautiful, haunted, shabby, beleaguered yet still utterly sublime Middle Eastern city.”—Lucette Lagnado, author of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years

“Brilliant.”—The Jerusalem Post

gradeLevels

1. • value: Grade 6

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Trevor Naylor, American University in Cairo Bookstore
   • content: "Of the novels set in Egypt, few if any have understood how Cairo's place at the crossroads of many religions has broken communities' and families' hearts through the centuries. This novel explores the center of Cairo's oldest places through the story of one family and their search for a mysterious artifact, and for closure."
2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2017
     

     In this follow-up to Lukas's multi-award-finalist, internationally best-selling debut, The Oracle of Stamboul, Berkeley literature student Joseph--born of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father--discovers a remarkable family history that opens with the al-Raqb family having served for a millennium as watchmen of the Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo. The synagogue's treasure: the celebrated and perhaps magical Ezra Scroll.

     Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 1, 2018
     An American student with a Jewish mother and Muslim father explores his family's tangled roots in the history of Cairo's ancient synagogue.When he receives the bequest of an ancient document fragment after the death of his Egyptian father, Berkeley grad student Joseph al-Raqb embarks on a search to discover its provenance. His journey unfolds, for the most part, in an extended visit to Cairo, where he learns more details of his family's nearly 1,000 years of continuous service as night watchmen for the city's Ibn Ezra Synagogue. In a dusty attic space, the synagogue once contained a geniza, a storeroom filled with hundreds of years of discarded documents, from records of mundane commercial transactions and routine legal disputes to sacred texts. It was a treasure trove that shed light on a broad swath of life in Cairo's once-thriving Jewish community. Blending his fictional creations with real characters--including Rabbi Solomon Schechter, the scholar who persuaded the leaders of the remnant of the Cairo Jewish community and Egyptian authorities to allow him to export a substantial portion of the contents of the geniza to Cambridge University in 1897, where most of it remains to this day, and Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, the British Presbyterian twins and antiquarians who inspired his effort--Lukas creates a thoroughly credible mystery, centering on the whereabouts of an apocryphal text of the Torah known as the Ezra Scroll, without sacrificing any of the complexity and subtlety of a work of character-centered literary fiction. In Joseph's voice, Lukas (The Oracle of Stamboul, 2011) also reveals, through quietly moving scenes, the challenges of identity posed by the ambiguity of his protagonist's own heritage, as the son of a Muslim father and a Jewish mother who never married each other. And in his exploration of some 10 centuries of Cairo's history, including times when the city's Jews and Muslims lived side by side in relative harmony, Lukas at least hints that another era of peaceful coexistence is not beyond imagining.An appealing family drama illuminates the fascinating story of a famous repository of Jewish documents, the Cairo Geniza.

     COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 12, 2018
     In this evocative novel, Lukas takes readers to Cairo at three different points in its history. One thousand years ago, Ali ibn al-Marwani, a Muslim orphan, becomes the night watchman at the Ibn Ezra Synagogue. In 1897, English twin sisters, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, arrive in Cairo to assist Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter in acquiring the ancient scrolls held in the synagogue’s storage area. And in the present, Joseph, a Berkeley graduate student who is half-Jewish, half-Muslim, receives a mysterious package from his recently deceased father, which sends him to Cairo to unravel the secret behind the unusual bequest. What binds all three stories is the legendary 2,000-year-old Ezra scroll, purported
     to be the most perfect Torah scroll ever created and supposedly stored at the
     synagogue. Over the centuries, Ali finds that love and duty don’t mix, Agnes and Margaret traverse a bureaucratic labyrinth to arrive at the Jewish Holy of Holies, and Joseph goes from clue to clue to unlock his father’s past and his own future. Like a contemporary Lawrence Durrell, Lukas (The Oracle of Stamboul) turns the Egyptian city into a tantalizingly seductive place of mystery. And although the story is dramatically diffuse, it is redeemed by the author’s vision of
     a more hopeful world where Jews and Muslims come together over a shared cultural heritage. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2018
     

     A package arrives at Joseph's apartment in Berkeley three months after his father's death in Cairo, unleashing a torrent of memories from his youthful visit to Egypt, including his father's fantastical tale of a perfect Torah, the mystical Ezra Scroll, protected by Muslim men for over 1,000 years. Drawing on the true story of the Geniza documents uncovered in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, California Book Award finalist Lukas (The Oracle of Stamboul) entrances readers with an account that spans generations, beginning with Ali al Raqb, a Muslim orphan trusted by rabbinical leaders to be the first watchman of the temple and its contents, a sacred duty accepted by Ali's descendants down to Joseph's father. We meet the adventurous scholars Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, twin sisters who traveled to Cairo in 1897 on a quest to search the synagogue's attic storeroom for the ancient scroll. With their friend Solomon Schechter and help from another al Raqb watchman, they ultimately forward trunks full of valuable papers to Cambridge University for safekeeping. VERDICT Lukas enlivens a fascinating epoch when Jews and Muslims bridged cultural divides for a common cause. Part mystery, part character study, yet historically accurate, this book should appeal to a broad swath of readers. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/17.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

     Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

520

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/61843a59-60f5-45e5-9a4f-0c203c8b870f/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

61843a59-60f5-45e5-9a4f-0c203c8b870f

starRating

3.8

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/618/43A/59/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/618/43A/59/{61843A59-60F5-45E5-9A4F-0C203C8B870F}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fantasy
2. • value: Fiction
3. • value: Literature
4. • value: Historical Fiction

publishDateText

03/13/2018

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9780399181184

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

In this “wonderfully rich” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the author of the internationally bestselling The Oracle of Stamboul, a young man journeys from California to Cairo to unravel centuries-old family secrets.
 
“This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman
WINNER OF: THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD • THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • THE SAMI ROHR PRIZE FOR JEWISH LITERATURE • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC • Longlisted for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize • A Penguin Random House International One World, One Book Selection • Honorable Mention for the Middle East Book Award
 
Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One...

sortTitle

Last Watchman of Old Cairo A Novel

crossRefId

3510284

subtitle

A Novel

publisher

Random House Publishing Group

atos

7.5

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC014000
   • description: FICTION / Historical / General
2. • code: FIC019000
   • description: Fiction / Literary
3. • code: FIC061000
   • description: Fiction / Magical Realism